I came across an old mission buddy on Facebook this week and we’ve been reminiscing since. He reminded me that when we were working together in the mission office (he was Assistant to the President and I, the financial secretary), that a 17-year-old new convert (“…the boy with the long hair”) had come to us and asked us to teach his attorney uncle about the church because he was getting a lot of flack at home. My friend remembers it this way:

Carlos came back after we gave that discussion, so excited that his uncle was telling the family to lay off Carlos, that the Church wasn’t a bad thing. He went on and on about how impressed his uncle was with you. Then he suddenly stopped and looked embarrassed. “Uh, my uncle was impressed with you too,” he stammered. I just started laughing. I didn’t need his uncle to be impressed with me. I tried to tell him it was okay, but he was determined to remember some good thing his uncle had said about me. Finally, he looked up grinning with an “I got it!” look on his face. “You know what really impressed my uncle about you? Your shoe size! He said he never saw feet that big in his life!”

So you were the reason the heat came off Carlos, allowing him to stay active, go on a mission, marry Monica, be a bishop, stake president, mission president, and now the First Quorum of the Seventy. Steve! You made a GA!

He’s referring to Carlos Godoy of the First Quorum of Seventy.

And from today’s Salt Lake Tribune:

Gay-marriage ruling brings split Utah reaction

The LDS Church expressed disappointment at the news from California. Hundreds of jubilant gay-marriage supporters marched around the church’s Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.On Wednesday, Utahns both panned and praised the decision of a federal judge in San Francisco to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that eliminated gay marriage in California. Two years ago, the campaign drew intense interest in Utah after the LDS Church urged its members to support Prop 8 with their cash and time. Utahns spent $3.8 million — most of it to defeat gay marriage — in the $83 million fight.

The federal ruling means, for now, gay marriage is legal — again —in the Golden State.
(more…)

From today’s San Jose [California] Mercury:

East Bay gay and lesbian couples rejoice at ruling

EL CERRITO — Gay and lesbian couples across the Bay Area rejoiced following news that a federal judge overturned Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage in California.
(more…)

After many years and this second physical attempt, I found the grave of Betty Maud Clements in a Blumenau, Brazil cemetery yesterday morning. Her granddaughter — who died two years afterwards — is buried in the same grave.

I genuinely loved this quick trip to Blumenau and feel like really accomplished something good.

I spent the rest of the day site-seeing, reminiscing and generally enjoying the first city of my Brazilian mission in 1978-79.

Last week I was contacted by an old mission buddy of mine, whom I had not seen in more than twenty years. He was in Salt Lake City recuperating from a liver transplant performed in late January and according to the email he sent my older brother to track me down, “wanted to thank” me.

We corresponded via email a few times and arranged to have dinner this week — after I overcame a bad cold and had returned from a long weekend in San Francisco with family.

Upon my return and before we had a chance for that dinner, he said that he had been released a week early to go back to his home in Rexburg, Idaho, so I missed actually seeing him face-to-face.

He’s a good guy with a big heart. I wonder what he will think of me when he finds out that I am gay. My gut tells me that he’d be okay with it, but then my head plays the Rexburg, former-bishop card and I’m left with doubts.

One thing in favor of the former, is that he did not mention the church or religion in our email correspondence — which gives me a ray of hope. Like others, he probably already knows on some level and is just seeking confirmation.

I wish he were on Facebook; it’s so much easier to let my profile do the outing.